The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Generally, embedded systems (i.e., computers used in specialty applications such as a digital signage device) boot firmware from flash memory, which is generally mounted on the motherboard of the embedded system. The firmware typically specifies a set of storage devices (i.e., bootable data storage devices) from which the embedded system may boot. These bootable data storage devices can include a hard drive, a CD-ROM drive, a floppy drive, a USB drive, etc. In most cases, however, these bootable data storage devices take up valuable space, particularly on the motherboard. The available size of a single flash memory chip, however, continues to increase while the associated cost continues to decrease, therefore making flash memory a preferred option as a bootable storage device.
Further, embedded systems often utilize an operating system that is specific to the particular application, be it a media center, vehicle infotainment device, etc. In particular, digital signage devices are typically preconfigured with their own operating system. Because of the varying operating systems of digital signage devices, however, it has been difficult to create a centrally-managed network of digital signage devices. Because it has been difficult to create and maintain a centrally-managed digital signage device network, signage device owners and advertisers have been unable to easily engage the services of one another, which leads to lost revenue for signage device owners and lost advertising opportunities for advertisers. By utilizing the rapidly-increasing size of flash memory, the embedded system could be provided with multiple operating systems.
Therefore, there is a long-felt but unresolved need for embedded systems with multiple operating systems that can be booted from flash memory. Further, there is a need for a digital signage device such that it is compatible with a centrally-managed global network of digital signage devices. Finally, there is a need to catalog and store signage device identifying information to authenticate signage devices and add the devices to a global network of managed signage devices.